Digital transformation in the Cloud, IBM and the API-economy

Share this post:

IBM has many nicknames. For the Dutch among us, I kinda liked the “Incompatible B Merk” in the times the company tried to push OS/2 operating systems for the non-compatible PS/2. ‘I’ve Been Moved” is another name and of course, “Itshi Bitshi Machines”.
Recently I thought of “I Bought More”, as a reflection of IBM’s acquiring activities. This time it has bought StrongLoop.
Hmm….., never heard of it? Let me try to explain.

One step back, looking at the (IT) world at large, we are now in an API-economy. API stands for Application Programming Interface and is, in general, a way that software programs can communicate with each other. The fun thing about those API’s is that one program doesn’t have to know the first thing about the program it wants to talk to. Doesn’t have to know the internals, the Operating System, the release, the hardware it runs on, where it resides. Nothing. Just some rules on how to invoke it.

Google was one of the first to publish API’s. I believe that back in 2002 it released the API’s for geo-positioning and the maps. From that day on, one could just send an URL (the funny text on the top line of your browser) including the street name, city, etc. and Google gave back the geo-position or the other way around; you entering the geo-location and Google giving back the street, city, postal code, etc.
That’s the sole reason we now can easily use mapping and navigation on our mobile devices.

And although some among us were wondering what the business model was, it is now clear that Google did a clever thing.
Today, many, many companies are opening up their – internal – applications and data to the world to be consumed. Sometimes it’s free, sometimes one has to pay for those services. Sometimes companies are reluctant to do so or don’t see the business benefit, for others it is the only way to survive. Banks in the Netherlands are obliged to give access to some data by means of API’s.

Many reasons for IBM to enter the space of API’s.

Although the concept of those API’s are relatively simple, to develop, maintain and publish them can be awkward. Opening up to the outside world needs to be done with prudence. Security is of course very important but one also wants to control, for example, network traffic not blocking business services. The number of API’s a company wants to publish can easily go up to many hundreds. Those API’s have to be in sync, secure and manageable.

IBM has a product called API Management that can be deployed onto a IBM DataPower Security Gateway. You can log into the APIM tool as an internal creator of an API, as an internal monitoring function, or as an external developer wanting to know how and against what terms I can use the API’s.

With StrongLoop IBM enlarged it’s portfolio of API capabilities. StrongLoop is a company that developed an open-source API framework with built-in mobile service. Think about all the stuff you need if you want to send out push notifications or geo-location. The term ‘framework’ refers to the fact that a programmer doesn’t need to do all the coding him/herself. They can call upon already developed functions in order to quickly and consistently develop business functionality. Apart from that framework (called LoopBack) there are other functionalities like a tool to help you compose API’s, to build and deploy them. If needs be (and the API is very popular) there are tools to scale the API’s and to secure them. Last but not least StrongLoop offers a tool to monitor the API’s.

It’s an interesting product in an interesting part of IT, have a look at it here.